POV The Storm Makers

Air date: Mon., Aug. 31, 10:00 pm

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Featuring brutally candid testimony, this film is a chilling exposé of Cambodia’s human trafficking underworld and an eye-opening look at the complex cycle of poverty, despair and greed that fuels this brutal modern slave trade. More than half a million Cambodians work abroad and a staggering third of these have been sold as slaves. Most are young women, held prisoner and forced to work in horrific conditions, sometimes as prostitutes, in Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.

The story is told from the perspectives of a former slave whose return home is greeted with bitterness and scorn by her mother; a successful trafficker – known in Cambodia as a “storm maker” for the havoc he and his cohorts wreak – who works with local recruiters to funnel a steady stream of poor and illiterate young people across borders; and a mother who has sold to the recruiter not only local girls, but also her own daughter.